1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to calibration methods for robot manipulators, and particularly to a calibration method for a tool center point of a robot manipulator.
2. Description of Related Art
Robot manipulators are used in various industrial fields to fulfill the task requirements for product assembling, welding and other tasks automatically. A robot manipulator of related art may be equipped with a tool, such as a cutting device, a gripper, a glue dispenser or a fixture mounted to a distal end. The tool has a specific defined point, called the Tool Center Point (TCP), that is commanded to move to various positions in the workspace when a robot manipulator performs a task. In use, the operating accuracy of the robot manipulator directly depends on a robot control system knowing the precise position of the TCP relative to the robot manipulator's distal end. Since the tool may have been mounted to the distal end of the robot manipulator manually, an alignment error may arise between the tool and the robot manipulator, thereby causing the TCP to deviate from its expected position relative to the robot's distal end. Manual calibration of the position of the tool center point is time-consuming and inconvenient, and the precision of manually calibrating the tool center point is not guaranteed.
Therefore, there is room for improvement within the art.